Winning At Scrabble

I would love to be able to say how much my batteries are re-charged after a fortnight away, and how my mind has miraculously come up with some brilliant trading strategies that somehow never made it to the forefront of my consciousness previously, but the truth is that I pretty much forgot all about betting and simply enjoyed what was possibly the last family holiday with my two (now grown) kids. At 23 and 21, with graduations later this Summer and both in full-time work at some point in the not too distant future, scheduling similar trips in the future will be a challenge. If you have kids, enjoy them. They grow up fast.

The selection of Maui as our destination proved to be fortuitous. Our choice of destination was decided by each of the four of us drawing a letter from the Scrabble bag. After an 'M' and an 'A', it was looking like possibly Guam or Malo might come in, but when the 'I' followed it was down to Mali or Maui. Mrs. Cassini was rooting for Siam, but a reading of the rules made it clear that former historical names did not count. Fortunately, the fourth letter was a 'U' and Mali was out of the running. A close call, as a vacation there would not have been quite so relaxing. We may have to reconsider the selection process for any future trips.

Maui is a different world. Eleven time-zones from the UK, and it was easy enough to lose track of time altogether, never mind trying to schedule time to watch games. At the request of my son, we did make sure to catch the Chelsea v Benfica game last week, with his Dad having a small punt on the -0.5 / -1 AH market for a small profit. There really is a lot more to life than trading sports, but the latter can help you to enjoy the former. While looking at the blog stats for my time away, I noticed a keyword search entry of "Money can not buy happiness but it much more comfortable to cry in a ferrari then on a bicycle" which is very true (at least I guess it is - I own a bicycle, but no Ferrari yet!). I didn't even get around to posting anything on the blog, although the daily hit count never dropped below 249, which is a little surprising, and I am two weeks behind on reading the updates of others.

Back to reality then, and the first order of business is the Friendly Tipster Table which is now up to date I believe, although there were no selections from Griff for the past two weekends, nor from Geoff for this weekend, and the Green Pullover has pulled the plug on his draw selections to focus on more profitable areas. The XX Draw Selections have had a stellar three weekends with five draws from the last nine selections, and currently eight consecutive winners on the respective Unders.

Sunday's game was 2-0 after 10 minutes, and I suspect most subscribers were not expecting anything from the game, but the remaining 80 minutes plus time added on produced no further goals for a perhaps lucky outcome. The Koln v Werder Bremen game also saw two goals before half-time, but again none in the second.

The XX Unders lead the table with an ROI of 19.1%, with the XX Draws in second spot with an ROI of almost 12.8% - from 129 selections.

It was interesting to note that on three of these recent selections, Football Elite opposed me, with Nice v Olympique Marseille and Sunderland v Tottenham Hotspur winners for me, while Newcastle United v Liverpool was a winner for FE. The Newcastle game was actually one of those where my heart didn't agree with the spreadsheet's selection - clearly Liverpool are not in form, while Newcastle are - and the Elo ratings sometimes appear to change too slowly to capture dramatic changes in form, especially when adjustments are not based solely on results - but the spreadsheet seems to know what it's doing overall, and it would be more galling to ignore it and have the selection win, than follow it, and lose. Football Elite's two 'non-winners' were backed with the Draw No Bet, a strategy Matt seems to be using more often these days, so no losses for the service there, and he has been on a roll since early February, up approximately 10.4% on the season after a slow start.

Backing the draw in Ian Erskine's Lay The Draw Selections has produced three winners from the last nine selections, and this method is in fourth place in the table with an ROI of 8.6%.

Mark J's selections continue to hover around the break-even mark, currently slightly down.

Peter Nordsted's Drawmaster returned to winning ways on Saturday, with winning draws in the games at Liverpool and Norwich City, but still in the red slightly on the season.

And the full table, to the best of my knowledge, now looks like this: